


A Rose By Any Other Name

by UnorthodoxDream



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Dimension-Hopping Rose, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Non graphic mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 09:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnorthodoxDream/pseuds/UnorthodoxDream
Summary: When Rose starts hopping dimensions to get back to her Doctor and fix the stars she runs into a familiar face. She runs into it more than a few times.Just some fun to get me back into writing.





	A Rose By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> This hasn't been edited at all, it's just something i wrote for shits and giggles. I wrote it in about an hour so its not good lmao. Theres an implication of torture but nothing is discussed. I've basically just taken every role Tennant has done that i could think of off the top of my head (plus the man himself) and taunted Rose with them. It occurs to me now that I missed Alec Hardy but oh well.

She’d learned her lesson the first time. Never approach someone in an alternate dimension until you know their name. It’ll hurt less when you realize they’re not yours. 

Thankfully, the first time it had happened, it hadn’t been Him that she saw. No, it had been her mother, cradling a small child. She’d called out the name she knew, a hopeful “Jackie?” Instead of mum. She knew the rules of time travel well enough to know not to give away their relationship. Unfortunately she didn’t know the rules of dimensional travel quite so well. She had approached, placing a hand in the woman’s shoulder. “Jackie is that you?” She’d been met with the confused gaze of a stranger and a “who’s Jackie?”. She’d been told the woman’s name was Reneitte (and oh didn’t that sting just a bit) and she fished out her phone to show pictures of Jackie and explain her confusion (they’d laughed for a bit, looking at the pictures of the similar woman with a similar toddler. But Jackie had an older gaze, born, she knew, from watching her daughter face impossible odds). She’d gone back after that, had cried as she realized what her mission was now. It was with bitter tears she realized that even if they looked alike, none of these people would be hers until she found Him. 

On her first encounter with someone not Him, she’d met a man named Casanova. He’d sprinted pass as an angry father chased the promiscuous lad out of his house. It had made her breath catch to see his face, but the youthful exuberance in his eyes would never be seen in His eyes. She’d known it wasn’t him, but she’d sought him out anyway. She told him he’d reminded her of a lover, and they spent a night of passion beneath the stars. She’d known it wasn’t him, but it still hurt to watch him walk away. 

The second time, she’d met a honest-to-goodness demon. She hadn’t known he was a demon, not at first, not until she’d been cornered for following him and he’d sputtered in horror about her not having any kind of soul or presence. After explaining her existence they’d met with a nice older-looking man (who, she now knew, was older than even her Time Lord) and they’d sat in the park and fed the ducks while she waited to be able to return to Pete’s World. Before she left she’d learned that there was a gallifrey in this universe, an uninhabited but beautiful planet primed for when humanity reached the stars. If the demon version of her time lord was a bit proud of the planet he’d made, she made no mention of it. He showed it to her for just a moment before she was whisked away. She cried for her doctor and the home he’d lost, even as she felt more at ease than she had in months. 

The third time she’d seen him as a lawyer with some sort of panic disorder. She’d stayed with him in the hall of the courthouse as he calmed, soothed his fears and helped him come up with a plan. If he couldn’t practice, then at least he wouldn’t have to give up doing what he loved. She didn’t stay long with that him, the american accent grating and strange to her. He’d spend some time looking for the girl that had helped him before eventually moving on. 

After that she didn’t see him at all for quite some time. She’s sure she’d passed the faces of different incarnations of him, but she didn’t see the face she was looking for for what she assumed was months, but could have been years. Her sense of time was getting quite confused after popping into and out of so many different universes. She’d figured out that sometimes weeks for her would only be seconds in Pete’s World. She’d spent two years on an alien planet once, in a universe she was sure couldn’t have been farther from her own. As she was beginning to lose hope, she’d been kidnapped. 

It seems weird to her, to be given hope from being kidnapped, but she couldn’t help it. As soon as she saw that face again, twisted in madness though it was, she was able to shore up her determination again. That face would always bring her hope, no matter who the actual person behind it was. Funnily enough, she’d accidentally unnerved her kidnapper for being so calm. She couldn't help that either though, she wasn’t exactly idle in her jumps. She’d saved her fair share of worlds and even a universe or two in her time. It took a lot more to unnerve her than some mad rich boy wearing His face. She’d stayed until nightfall before escaping, making sure to report to the police before she jumped home. If her team was startled by her beaten appearance, they didn’t say anything. Truthfully she’d come back in worse condition before. 

She found out, after that, that his face had quite the penchant for appearing on madmen. She’d met a him who could control people with his voice once, and ended up sticking around for longer than she’d intended to out of sheer fascination. The madman in question had been equally fascinated by her immunity to his power, and indeed all powers in that universe. She assumed it had to do with her not belonging to that universe. If something in her howled and growled and snarled every time someone tried something, well, she’d be better off not telling anyone. She didn’t want to be taken off the project for mental instability, after all. She stayed there for two weeks, slapping the purple-suited man silly everytime he tried to order her around. 

The next madman she met had been something of a surprise. She’d landed in a universe where Harry Potter was an actual person and ended up, through some means or another, at the trial of a mister Barty Crouch Jr. She’d jerked in her seat after seeing his face, but forced herself still lest she draw attention to herself. However she still held though, he still met her eyes through the crowd. She was as unprepared as everyone else when he’d stopped moving and struggled towards her. He’d gotten close enough to touch her, a lovers caress upon her cheek, before he was yanked back in line by the aurors. He’d screamed and thrashed like he was being tortured as they dragged him from her. She’d sat, absolutely stunned, until she saw the manic grin that crossed his face as they met eyes once more. He mouthed something at her, a familiar word that set her heart beating so many times faster in her chest, as he was finally dragged out of the doors. She was out of the ministry building before they could even think to detain her. She wondered for a long time after that why a man she’d never met before (no matter how much he looked like Him she knew from experience he wasn’t) had caressed her so tenderly. She eventually decided that between the danger to the multiverse, the magic in that universe, and his own madness that something of Him had clung to the death eater. Or maybe it was her own madness connecting to his. She would never find out for sure. 

A while later she finds a Him thats an actor. A Him that plays the part of every other Him she’d ever met. She thinks that him is the scariest. She can’t always tell that its not actually Him with this one. He’s too similar and too different, his scottish accent reminding her of werewolves. She watches the show that stars Him from beginning to end as she waits for her trip back to Pete’s World to be ready. She cries as she wonders if that’s what’s really happening to him while she’s been gone. 

Eventually she made it back to her own universe. She ended up hopping all over that universe, in so many different times. The legend of the Bad Wolf, of the Wolf who chases the Storm, became pervasive in certain parts of that universe. Parts she knew, somewhere deep in her that still howled, he’d never been to. She did end up in places he had been though. That was, after all, the objective. She met several of his previous incarnations, but curiously none of his future ones. It took another (relative) year before she really did see him again. She’d caught the edge of his coattails many times, but she finally came face to face with him again when the earth got stolen. After seeing his face on the souls of so many others, it was truly a relief to see him, the real him. She couldn’t stop herself from running to him, a fact she curses now. They went and saved the world after his time lord tricks had let him keep his face, and in her opinion Donna had done it quite brilliantly. 

And then he’d left her again. Left her in a universe that she knew, after hopping through so many, she didn’t belong in. She would never be able to explain to the Metacrisis him exactly why she broke down crying, though she knew he thought he knew. She wouldn’t be able to explain to him the feeling of a cell door closing over her, of the grief looking at a face she knew wasn’t Him no matter how similar they were caused her. She couldn’t hurt him that way. A wolf howled from the chasm in her chest and she knew this wasn’t the end. 

How many years had it been since she’d started hopping? For her team she knew it had been a few years at most, but time had slipped from her grasp while she’d been away. Or rather, she had slipped into its. She didn’t know how long it had been, but she did know one thing. Her face was still a youthful 19. 

Even now, their forevers didn’t match.


End file.
